Emanuel Celler

Emanuel Celler (6 May 1888-15 January 1981) was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from New York from 4 March 1923 to 3 January 1973, succeeding Mario Biaggi and preceding four congressional district representatives.

Biography
Emanuel Celler was born in Brooklyn, New York on 6 May 1888, the son of a German Jewish father and a mother of mixed Christian and Jewish German descent. Celler graduated from the Columbia School of Law before becoming a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from New York in 1923. Celler opposed the immigration quota policies of the isolationist US government during the early 20th century, and he criticized both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the isolationist US Republican Party for their restriction on Jewish immigration at the time of the Holocaust. In 1964, he was one of the men behind the drafting of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he also supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. In 1973, he lost his seat in the House to the liberal Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman, and he died in 1981 at the age of 92.